Norway, China may team up in search for Arctic oil, Reuters says

Norway is deciding whether to team up with China to explore for oil in Iceland, Reuters reported Wednesday, citing Icelandic authorities. Norway has the right to join an exploration license with Chinese oil firm CNOOC to look for oil in the waters between Iceland and Norway’s Jan Mayen, a tiny speck of land in the Arctic, the report said. Communications between Beijing and Oslo have been mostly cool since a diplomatic row over the award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, it said. “We expect an answer from the Norwegian authorities in the last week of November,” Gudni Johannesson, director general of Iceland’s National Energy Authority, said.

The US urged the International Monetary Fund to help move trading powers away from large trade surpluses, and called on the World Bank to curtail its lending to middle-income countries, the Wall Street Journal...

Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda said Sunday the central bank would continue its expansive monetary policy in an effort to boost inflation, the Wall Street Journal reports. “The Bank of Japan will consistently...

The strength of the US labor market calls for continued gradual increases in interest rates despite subdued inflation, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Sunday. In a speech in Washington, the central bank...

China’s central bank chief on Sunday called for greater transparency in Chinese public finances, saying their murkiness means investors underestimate the risks of local government debt, the Wall Street Journal reports. Zhou Xiaochuan, governor...

Saudi Aramco is mulling the sale of some stake to a Chinese investor as plans for its international public offering are pushed beyond its 2018 target, Reuters reports, citing sources familiar with the matter....

With China’s unprecedented economic growth and urbanization that began nearly 40 years ago, the major cities of the Pearl River Delta, including Hong Kong, now intersect to such an extent that they are collectively...